


The Walk Home

by thesometimeswarrior



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-25
Updated: 2014-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-27 01:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2673011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He heard the boy scream, beg as they beat him and sprayed his blood. Why hadn't he helped? </p><p>Caesar Flickerman reflects after Peeta's third interview. Set during Mockingjay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Walk Home

Caesar felt his hand twitch and hastily shoved it in his pocket, so as to keep it hidden from the Peacekeepers. Not that they would’ve seen, given how intently they were otherwise occupied. He heard the boy scream, beg as they beat him and sprayed his blood, found himself unwittingly and unconsciously standing, feet facing them, ready to leap, to somehow stop them…But no, he told himself. That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all.

In his pocket, he gripped his hand tightly.

They dragged the boy away…back to his quarters or cell or _somewhere_ (he didn’t know anymore), and with a tense nod from the President, Flickerman was dismissed. The Capitol was in the first throws of winter, the wind had come even if the snow had not yet, and as he left the Presidential Mansion, Caesar buried his face in his shag coat. He’d have killed for a cigarette. (Yes, he’d given the habit up long ago—bad for the complexion, and smoking was an archaic, scorned, illegal, and filthy practice anyway—but there were nonetheless times, and this was one of them, when he craved the warm tar and the nicotine in his lungs, no matter what it did to him or to his picture perfect face.) At least the camera had been knocked over before the bulk of the beating. He wasn’t thrilled about it—it wasn’t neat enough for his taste or for what he normally produced—but it didn’t seem like anything too bad.

Why didn’t he act back there, help the boy? (But then why didn’t he help any of them?) He pictured the scene as it might have gone. It was comical, in a way: the thin man in an extravagant suit with an artificial tan, too many facelifts, and purple hair, launching himself at five bulky Peacekeepers with bodies built to intimidate. At best, he supposed, he could’ve hung on to one of their necks for a few seconds before someone knocked him off and unconscious. And then…what? He’d be arrested? Probably stripped and searched. And maybe with good reason, considering that there was a war brewing, and that it seemed like more and more Capitol citizens ( _his_ people, he told himself) were turning to the side of the terrorists. But if they stripped and searched him, they’d have discovered his tattoos under all the pompous clothing, and if they hadn’t thought he was a rebel before, they’d certainly have thought so then, even if he hadn’t been. And he wasn’t, never was, and thus wouldn’t have been then.

He found his hand drawn to the spot on his upper left thigh where he knew was inscribed two initials in black ink with a small red circle around them. He knew he should’ve gotten it removed, that having it now technically made him a traitor. (The thought was strange. He still loved his Panem...Right?) And he had tried. Really, he had. The day President Snow had announced that any association to the Mockingjay was treason, Flickerman called his private tattoo artist—the one whom he summoned after the series of interviews at the beginning of each Hunger Games—fully intending to have her remove it. But when her tools approached the small _“K.E.”_ and its corresponding circle, he knocked them away and sent her away. Caesar spent over an hour after that naked and alone in front of a mirror, tracing and retracing each of the 889 sets of initials on his body, and the twenty-three circles around those that symbolized the names that had been twice selected since he’d been Host. It somehow seemed to him that by removing Katniss Everdeen’s, he diminished or disrespected all of them. And he couldn’t. And he couldn’t discern why he couldn’t.

If he had stood up for the boy, and they had arrested him, if he then woke up, found himself stripped and strapped to a table somewhere with President Snow’s eyes on him, the tattoos in plain sight, he wondered what he might have said to defend himself. He could’ve claimed that each tattoo was a marker of how proud he was of each Hunger Games interview he conducted—yes perhaps. And it wouldn’t have been a lie, either. He _was_ proud of each of his interviews.  Flickerman liked to think he was good at what he did, able to take each fish from District Four and make it sing, make each piece of coal from District Twelve shine, just by asking the right questions.

He had always, even a boy before he knew he wanted it to be him standing on the stage, polishing the young tributes, he had always admired the theatrics of it all. And even at his first games—the 39th Annual Hunger Games—he loved shaking the hands, kissing the cheeks, joshing the tributes in just the right way. But it wasn’t until he was there on the stage standing next to Bali Hacker, the little twelve-year-old girl from District Ten, it wasn’t until he kissed her tiny hand, and saw that her feet did not even touch the ground when she sat in his interview chair, that he realized how _young_ the Tributes were. Children. And when the blood from Bali’s chest wound dyed her hands red as she tried to stanch it, Caesar couldn’t help but remember that he had kissed that hand. And that little Bali admired her father—“the best cow herder in Panem”—more than anyone else in the world and had wanted to be like him someday. And the brilliant fifteen-year-old Roni Meken from District 3, whose hand he shook, and who claimed to have an idea for a new type of computer that was sure to revolutionize Panem. But Panem would never know it, because Roni was impaled with a spear at the Cornucopia, with that same hand Caeser had shook raised in surrender. Something had stirred in Flickerman, in his hand and lips which had shook and kissed the corpses’ hands, something he didn’t understand. But he _did_ understand that he had to remember these children as more than their deaths, but as lives, hopes, dreams, names. So he got his first twelve tattoos after that. And since then, he had tried to make the children shine in his brief time with them, so that Panem could also see what he wanted them to see, remember their names. And after his first Games, his smiles and laughter when watching and Hosting became a little sadder (even if he didn’t know why, even if he’d never let it show for the cameras. Because that wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all.)

And he knew, of course, that the Games were necessary. He’d grown up with stories of the Dark Days, the original rebellion, fires in the Capitol, strange, vicious creatures in the Districts, explosions in the streets and in the houses. War terrified him, so yes, the Districts had to be reminded of the Capitol’s might, so that war would not come again. And yet it was coming. Something hadn’t worked, had fallen out of place. They could’ve prevented it—why did Peeta Mellark have to warn the uprisers? It all could’ve been over. Everything could be as it had been. But Peeta, Caeser knew, had just been trying to warn Katniss Everdeen, the supposed love of his life. (Caesar was familiar enough with show business to recognize acting when he saw it. He believed they were in love—or at least he was in love with _her_ —but he also knew that the boy was a brilliant performer, and must have known how much the Capitol adored their love story. Caesar had helped them act it all out, after all.) Yes, Katniss was on the side of the terrorists, but was Peeta wrong to try to protect her, if he could? Her, the radiant girl whom they had all adored.

He didn’t deserve what they had done to him. Such a brutal beating—moaning, begging, blood. Of course Caeser had seen it all before, in the Games. But those were the Games. Behind a screen. Not real, like this was real, in front of his eyes. And in the Games, it was other Tributes beating and brutalizing, not his Peacekeepers. Not his people. He had noticed that Peeta Mellark had appeared worse when he came for his second interview than he had when he came for his first. And today, for his third, worse still. Yes, the Capitol had to learn as much information as they could about the uprisers in District 13—it was vital to prevent the war from spiraling out of control. And certainly if the boy had the information, the Capitol should extract it. But he _was_ a boy. The Games were one thing. Somehow, this was another. And if he didn’t know anything, like he claimed…

When he had seen Peeta earlier that morning, after he asked the normal questions, making sure the boy was prepped for the interview, clear on what was to be covered and said, Caeser, so astute with people, saw the boy’s shaking hands, saw the pain and fear in his eyes. He’d put his hands on the boy’s shoulders, trying to transmit sympathy, or strength, or _something_. (He doubted the boy noticed, really. But he tried anyway.) He knew what was happening was too much, but it was necessary…right? And Flickerman would do what he always did, try to help him shine through it, help the Capitol.

And not overthink any of it. He could never overthink any of it. That wouldn’t do. Not at all.

He did his duty, just as Peeta Mellark did his.

Flickerman unlocked the door to his penthouse apartment, pulled off his coat and then his shirt and pants. Again he stood, naked, in front of the mirror—just him and the countless initials. He found the “ _P.M_.” and its red circle, traced them with his finger a few times, and found to his surprise a few tears streaming down his cheeks.

It had been a strange day. He’d take a nap, maybe go to bed early. He was sure he’d feel normal again in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> A few things: 
> 
> The idea for the tattoos was not originally mine; I found it on the lovely blog http://hunger-games-headcanons.tumblr.com/
> 
> I'd also like to credit AO3 users sakurasencha, vaspider, Viola25, Lobster, and FernWithy, whose Caesar fics I love, have read several times, and which have probably influenced this in some way.
> 
> Finally, a major thank you to my lovely beta Kate, AO3 user KateC125 (kates-barbaric-yawp.tumblr.com)!


End file.
